Turning Paige
by Angel-on-a-cloud489
Summary: Argus Filch’s daughter, who has spent her entire life believing that her father lives in a loony bin, begins to show signs of magical powers at the age of nineteen.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters, they belong strictly to J.K. Rowling, but I do however own Paige, she is entirely my creation.

Summary: Argus Filch's daughter, who has spent her entire life believing that her father lives in a loony bin, begins to show signs of magical powers at the age of nineteen.

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Turning Paige

Chapter One: Meet Paige

Weird, I suppose is the best way to describe what my life has been lately. I've always been considered a little odd, but that was just life. I came to the conclusion that since I was an odd person, my life would always be odd and I was comfortable with that. But now life is not simply odd; it's downright weird. I'm in a new situation, and even in this really weird and unusual situation, I'm the damn oddity.

I guess I'd better start at the beginning, as all stories do. Only this isn't a story, this is my life. My name is Paige Filch-Questa. I am nineteen years old and until recently I've lead an odd life, as I've already mentioned. I live with my mother in Montreal, Canada and I've never met my father. My parents are divorced, and my father lives in an institution for the mentally unstable. This has always been a rough point for me, especially on father's day, but it's made me a stronger person because of it. My mother married my father just long enough to have me and get me stuck hyphenating his weirdo last name to hers, Filch. It sounds too close to filth for my liking. I can't hate my dad for being crazy, but I really wish I could've met him. He left soon after I was born. It makes me wonder if I wasn't some sort of a disappointment to him, but oh well. I'll never know.

Oddly enough, my mother is still in contact with my father's parents. Now those are weird folks. Gran and Gramps, as I call them, probably belong in the loony bin with my dad. They used to give me weird gifts and do weird things when I was little, but not so much anymore. Most likely because they got my mom so mad when they did those things, like wave sticks around and talk gibberish, like they were pretending to be wizards and witches or something. It was cool when I was a kid, but they continued doing it until I was about 13. Then I guess my mom must have said that that was the last straw, because they haven't done it since. Yes, they definitely are a little weird.

I'm not entirely odd myself. I have plain long brown hair, I'm of an average height; 5"4, and I'm a healthy weight, not too skinny, not too chubby. The only distinguishing feature about me is my eyes. People always say that my eyes seem to glow. They are an icy blue and the colour is astoundingly piercing. I really think that my eyes are my best feature, although my mom once suggested that I wear coloured contacts. I don't know why I would do that, my vision is fine, and besides, it's nice to have something distinguishing about me. Absolutely no one has eyes as bright and piercing as mine, and I love it.

Well, I always longed to be different from everyone else, and one day I suddenly was. A lot more different than everyone else than I wanted to be, but I can't change that now…


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters, they belong strictly to J.K. Rowling, but I do however own Paige, she is entirely my creation. I also don't own Walmart or Zellers.

Summary: Argus Filch's daughter, who has spent her entire life believing that her father lives in a loony bin, begins to show signs of magical powers at the age of nineteen.

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Turning Paige

Chapter Two: What is Weird About Paige Anyways?

I have a detestable job. I am currently running what was once apparently my father's company, before he upped and went loony. It's a fair enough sized retail store, but people have a tendency to try to take advantage of us because we're not a big name company like Walmart or Zellers. No, we're called Knicks and Knacks. I don't know why my father called it something so boring, but it's too big of a hassle to change it, so it's stuck.

We have a small staff at K&K as I call it. Four cashiers and ten people manning the floor, and then there's me who runs the entire company and, oh joy of joys, customer service. In order to stand a chance against the goliath corporations that are our competition, we have to have a fantastic customer-employee relation base. That's what my job mostly is. I used to be ok with it, but now I've come to realize that most people are just plain dumb. People have tried to return a half eaten bag of chips because they didn't like them and expect a refund… how these people expect us to survive with ideas like that is beyond me.

Anyways, before I get too caught up in that rant, I will tell you how my odd life became weird. I had one angry customer come over to my counter, complaining that our light bulbs were a poor quality and over priced and it had apparently broken his light fixture somehow. This guy was in such a rage that he actually threw the light bulb straight at my head! I had groaned to myself and was mentally preparing myself to pick glass out of my head for the next few hours when the strangest thing happened. The bulb appeared to slow then stop in mid-air and then turned around and smashed itself on the guy who threw the bulb's head. He was in a state of shock and he just turned and stormed out of the store. The guy must have thrown it really weird or something, so I shrugged it off and continued about my day.

The very next day another strange occurrence transpired. An old lady was walking with her walker down the jam aisle when she managed to bump into what must be the only weak shelf in the entire store and brings down the entire thing, shattering jams all over the floor. Of course, I was fuming, and I stormed off to the broom closet to grab cleaner and a broom and a mop, all the while stressing about how much that blunder had just cost us. Our store wasn't doing the greatest and we could not afford to lose so much money on broken produce. Well, on my way back to the aisle with my cleaning products in hand, my jaw dropped. The shelves had somehow cleaned themselves and the jams were all back in their jars and entirely undamaged!

I questioned all of the employees immediately, of course, and none of them could explain it. I knew that we hadn't had anymore of that particular jam in stock, so they were not playing a trick on me. Who knows what happened? Maybe I had imagined the old lady destroying half the store. I just let it go as a good thing happening.

Then the weirdest thing of all happened; it was a really bad day, and our sales had been down for a while and I was behind on the rent for the building. Everyone had gone home for the day when I was reading the mail and I received the bad news. Our store had been sold out to a larger company by the bank because of our late rent payments. I couldn't cope with it. I exploded in rage… or rather the entire building exploded around me. I was entirely unscathed, but the building was in tattered little bits all around me. I couldn't cope with it, I passed out.

When I woke up, my mother was looking at me with the oddest expression on her face. I shifted around and the rest of the world came into focus. I was not at home; I was in a very white room on a hospital bed.

"Where am I Mom?" I asked her weakly, my head was pounding and I felt disturbingly weak.

"You are in Saint Mungo's sweetie," She replied. "We had quite a scare with you in the middle of all that debris! The police are still investigating what went wrong and caused that explosion…"

It all came flooding back to me. "Mom, this is going to sound crazy, but I think that I made the building blow up!"

My mother got an even stranger look on her face. "What do you mean honey? Did you leave the gas on or something?"

"No mom," I tried to explain, "The building hasn't had gas connected in the past 4 years. I got a letter in the mail today saying that the building had been sold out to one of our larger competitors. I became so mad! I couldn't help it, I just felt it building up inside of me and suddenly it was radiating out of me in waves and then the building collapsed!"

My mother looked as if she was choking on something, so I asked her what was wrong.

"Nothing," she replied, "but I think it's time for you to meet your father."

Oh my god she thought I was crazy!


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters, they belong strictly to J.K. Rowling, but I do however own Paige, she is entirely my creation.

Summary: Argus Filch's daughter, who has spent her entire life believing that her father lives in a loony bin, begins to show signs of magical powers at the age of nineteen.

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Turning Paige Chapter Three: Crazy? I Don't Think So! 

"Mom, I'm not crazy! Weird things have been happening around me lately…" and I went on to explain to her about the light bulb and the jam aisle. She just looked increasingly sad all the time.

Finally, I demanded she explain why she thought that I was crazy and talk a bit. What she had to tell me would change my life forever.

"Paige, I haven't been honest with you for a very long time. What I'm about to tell you is going to change your life forever, but I've spoken to the doctors here and they agree that something has to be done." My Mother began.

"Whoa there," I butted in, "What do you mean you haven't been honest with me? And what do you mean something has to be done? I didn't do anything wrong! I'm not crazy mom; maybe I'm just imagining things. I'll forget about it and go work at some other place with other normal people. I can still work at customer service at another company!"

My mother raised a hand to silence me and I stopped my babbling. She took a deep breath and let it out very slowly. "Paige, what I'm about to tell you is very difficult, so I'm going to ask you not to interrupt." I nodded my agreement. "Good, now I guess I should start at the beginning. Firstly, your father is not insane and does not live in a mental institution…"

"What!" I screeched. I couldn't help myself. My mother gave me a stern glare and I fell quiet.

"No, he's not crazy. He lives at Hogwarts School in England where he is a janitor. Hogwarts is a school for witches and wizards. Your father however, is not a wizard; he is what his people call a 'squib'. He doesn't have any magical powers what so ever, but both of his parents were magical. He married me when we were younger because he was trying to assimilate himself into the muggle community, but that just didn't work out very well for him. The lure of the magical world was just too strong for him, even if he couldn't take part in the actual magic. Muggles are what people who just plain aren't magical are called. I'm a squib as well; my parents disowned me though when I turned thirteen. It was too much of an embarrassment for them. They were pureblooded wizards as far back as history can tell. Gran and Gramps are pureblooded wizards. Those funny sticks they used to wave around were actually their real wands."

"I assimilated into the muggle community and lost all ties with magic until I married your father. We both admitted to each other that we were squibs after we were married. Your father then got this crazy idea in his head that he could save face with his family if we had a magical child. Well, I'll admit that I was swept away by the idea at first as well, but I wanted a child either way. Well, about nine months after we decided that, you were born. Your father and I were thrilled and you were beautiful, but your father quickly noticed that you were probably a squib as well. He was quite upset about this and returned to Hogwarts after we divorced. Gran and Gramps kept trying to trick the magic out of you until you were thirteen, the age that witches and wizards get accepted into Hogwarts. You showed no signs of magical powers then, so they gave up with their silly magic tricks. I figured you would be just another happy muggle girl, but lately you've started to show the signs of having magical powers. That's how we ended up here, St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies." My mom finally paused to catch her breath and see how I was taking all of this.

"Wow, I really am in the loony bin." I muttered.

"No Paige, you're not crazy. It's true, all of it. The doctors just finished examining you before you regained consciousness and they discovered that apparently you are magical after all, it just took a little longer to expose itself than most people. They think it may have something to do with having squib parents. They've contacted the ministry of magic and it was decided that you should go to Hogwarts for some fast-track training in the magical world. You're going to be a witch! I haven't told your father though, we've fallen out of contact with each other, but imagine his surprise when he sees his own flesh and blood as a student!" My mother said excitedly. "I have us booked on the next flight out to Britain. I'll be back in the morning to pick you up and then it's off to Hogwarts!"

My mom left the room practically floating while I was left to ponder just how insane I truly was…


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of the characters, they belong strictly to J.K. Rowling, but I do however own Paige, she is entirely my creation.

Summary: Argus Filch's daughter, who has spent her entire life believing that her father lives in a loony bin, begins to show signs of magical powers at the age of nineteen.

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Turning Paige

Chapter Four: Neville Longbottom

Alright, so I've come to the conclusion that I must be insane. That's what happened. It must be! My dad's genes finally caught up with me and caused me to have severe hallucinations. That's the only logical explanation. I'm supposed to be starting university next year once I save up money from working the store, I can't be going crazy!

I don't feel crazy, but then again, who am I to say what crazy feels like? If I'm crazy will I know that I'm crazy by feeling different?

This train of thought was making me dizzy, so I decided to take a walk. I looked over at the clock; it was 11:00 at night. Visiting hours were over, so I decided I should be safe walking the halls and checking out what this place was all about. If it actually is a mental hospital, I should be able to tell, or feel right at home. One way or the other, it'll get me out of this room which is driving me crazy. I walked out of my room and down the hall where I came to a staircase with what appeared to be directions of some sort on it. It indicated that I was on the fourth floor, dedicated to "Spell Damage." I read the smaller writing beneath the label and it described what was qualified as spell damage: Unliftable jinxes, hexes, incorrectly applied charms etc.

Hmm... Either I was dreaming or my hallucination from before was continuing. It said that the next floor up was the teashop, so I decided that a cup of tea was exactly what I needed to soothe my nerves and ponder over these things alone. Unfortunately, when I got up to the teashop, someone was already up there.

He seemed to be lost in thought, so I decided to go over to the tea dispenser and not bother him. He was probably an overnight visitor or something because he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt and not the mandatory hospital robes that even the 'magical world' haven't improved upon.

I took the teapot and looked around for a heater to boil the water on, or an electrical outlet or something, but could not find anything. My wandering and frustrated grunting must have gotten the attention of the boy sipping his tea, because he watched me for a few minutes before speaking.

"Do you need help with the tea?" he asked.

"Well, if you could just point me to the electrical outlet or the device that I'm supposed to use to warm this up, I'd be able to manage." I said, trying not to feel like an idiot for being unable to find a means to warm up the tea on my own.

The boy looked at me dumbfounded with his big brown puppy dog-like eyes. "I only understood about half of what you just said. What is an eklektical let out? All you have to do is tap it with your wand. It's not even using magic technically, the pot responds to wand taps. Oh, and be sure to think clearly in your head what type of tea you want, I ended up with lemon when I wanted rosemary."

Now it was my turn to be dumbfounded. "You don't know what an electrical outlet is? It's what you plug appliances into so that they work! What do you mean use a wand? What's a wand? Is that some sort of British word for an adaptor or something?"

The boy looked at me confused and just shrugged. He pulled out what appeared to be a long piece of wood and asked me what type of tea I preferred. I told him I'd like any old tea that the pot popped out, I just wanted something to soothe my nerves.

The boy giggled. "Well that's good, because to tell the truth, I'm not the best at magic, so I have to make do with whatever happens." He tapped the pot with his wand and within seconds it was whistling.

"How did you get the pot so hot so quickly?" I exclaimed.

The boy looked completely unimpressed; actually he seemed disappointed with himself. "It's supposed to be instantaneous, but I'm just plain not good at magic. Well, at least it did get hot. Now, what type is it?" He asked as he lifted the lid and sniffed. "Hmm, smells like chamomile and rosemary. It's what I was trying for the first time!"

I ignored his strange explanation and disappointment and looked into the pot. "Well there's more than enough to share in there. Why don't you get rid of the stuff in your cup and share with me?"

The boy blushed and dumped the contents of his cup in the sink and brought over a fresh cup for me. We sat for a few moments drinking our tea in silence. Then the boy cleared his throat.

"My name's Neville by the way, Neville Longbottom. I don't think I've ever seen you at Hogwarts, are you from around here?" He said shyly.

Again with that weird school name from that hallucination before, maybe this was another one..."My name's Paige." I said and then pinched myself and winced. Nope, not a hallucination, I was actually talking to a boy about wands and that Hogwarts place.

"Why'd you pinch yourself?" He asked.

"Because I thought that this was a hallucination, but apparently not because I don't think that you can experience pain in a hallucination. And if this isn't a hallucination, then that means that my conversation before wasn't a hallucination... and that means that my dad actually isn't crazy and I'm actually in Britain in a hospital and I really am a witch!" I said as it all came to me in a rush.

"Well of course you're a witch, how could you not be? You're in Saint Mungo's after all!" Neville said.

"So this isn't a hospital for the mentally insane?" I asked him.

A look of pain flashed across his face. "Well, there is a ward for people who have had their brains addled by magic, but that's one of the smaller wards that they have here. You didn't know that you were a witch? How old are you?"

"I'm nineteen years old, and in the past twenty four hours my life has turned upside down. I've gone from believing that my dad was insane to finding out that he's actually a squid or something and that he left my mother and me because he thought I was a muddle or something, but according to my mom I'm not, I just took a long time to tap my inner reserve of magical power and now I'm supposed to be a fully fledged witch but I still have to go and get a quick education at some place called Hog's warts or something like that!" I babbled out before I could stop myself. I then gave myself a mental slap, what was I doing dumping all of my problems on a stranger like that?

Neville gave me a funny look and then attempted to clarify. "I suppose you mean that your father was a squib? A non-magical person from a magical family? Is your mother one as well? They probably thought that you were a muggle, not a muddle, because muggles are what people with no magical parentage are called. The school's called Hogwarts by the way. I go there, I'm starting my sixth year this semester. Just one left to go after that!"

"So this is all real, the magic stuff? I can really do magic and I'm going to get a magical wand and fly around on a broomstick turning boys into toads and stuff like that?" I asked one last time, to be sure.

"Well, there are laws. Like you can't transfigure people against their will, transfiguration is when you change something from one shape to another, like a person to a toad. And you can't perform magic in front of muggles either. But you'll learn all about that stuff at Hogwarts. I've never heard of someone discovering their magical powers so late in life though. Most people show signs by thirteen at the latest."

"I know, the doctors said something about it being because my parents are both squibs that I have magical blood but whatever it is that makes squibs unable to access their magic just delayed me. I should have full access to it by the end of next year. My grandparents talked to the headmaster of Hogwarts and they organized a curriculum that should get me to an... OWL level? It was something like that, by the end of this year and I'll be taking the seventh year classes with everyone else and sitting the NEWTS at the end of that one... I think they're supposed to be some type of exam or something."

"Yes, they are exams. You're going to have to work really hard to get to an OWL level in one year though, most people take five. I guess you'll have an advantage because you're of age and will be able to practice at home and outside of school though." Neville said a little enviously.

I agreed that it would be hard to compact 5 years of knowledge into one, but I was determined, now that I knew I wasn't crazy. I looked at my watch and almost yelped, it was almost 2 in the morning! My mother and grandparents were supposed to meet me at 9 and I hadn't had any sleep at all! I bid Neville a hurried goodnight and he blushed yet again and said he'd see me on the Hogwarts Express on September 1st. I told him to save me a seat on the train so I wouldn't have to sit with strangers.

I went back to my room to sleep, wondering why on Earth it was so easy to make that boy blush. I also realized that I hadn't found out why he was in Saint Mungo's, I hope he was a healthy enough person, he seemed really nice...


End file.
